So close,yet so far away....!

Ni hao!

The generation above my generation is leaving this week. So jealous! I love the MTC but I know I am going to love England more. Like they say, at the MTC the campus is your world. A very small world. haha. Only two more weeks.

This week hasn't been too eventful. A few days ago my companion and I ran into some native Chinese speakers and one Elder was like "do you want to teach me?" So very abruptly we tried giving him a short little lesson like he was an investigator. He talked so fast and he had a Beijing accent so yep, didn't understand most of what he said. Accents make all of the difference when you are trying to understand others. He stopped us maybe five minutes in and was like "Ok.. first, you need to look me in the eyes. Second, if what you are saying is not interesting to me, then I will forget you. Try and share your message in 2 sentences." All good advice, and I later thought of what I would have done differently. The next time I have to do a street contact (in England I hope) I will be so much better prepared. And let's hope I can understand them too haha. The next day we ran into some native Chinese sisters and we spoke to them for a little and they complimented us on our accents. Yes!

So one of my teachers loves to ask a very hard question to answer and then always calls on me to answer. Each time I know it's coming but I always have a hope that he will just call on someone else. Everytime he calls on me I just like "Of course!" and we all laugh because it's true, I always get the hardest question. No worries though. I am usually able to answer with out too much of a struggle now.

The other day in class we were practicing a grammar principle while one of us was the missionary and the other person in our district would act like an investigator. It was my turn to be the missionary and I asked the Elder who was acting as the investigator if he had ever read the bible before. The way it works in Mandarin, the word for "read" can also be used to say "see/ look" and so this Elder was being difficult and was like "Yeah, I've seen my friend read the bible before." -_- Not the answer I was looking for. So after re asking the question three times hoping he would catch on to what I was asking, I meant to say to him "you don't understand my question!" but instead I ended up saying "you don't understand my body!" Haha. The word for body and question sound very similar and in my frustration I used the wrong one. We had a good laugh about that one.

We taught again that investigator who gave us a hard time. This second time around was a lot better. We taught the first lesson in Preach My Gospel on the Restoration and it went pretty well. Afterwards, the teacher that was acting as that investigator came back and complimented the companionships that taught him. He thought we all did a good job on our lesson on the Restoration.

This last weekend at TRC, Sister Goldrup and I had a real investigator! He goes to BYU and has a little bit of understanding of the church since you nonmembers are encouraged to go to church while they attend BYU. He was super nice and I hope we helped him understand our beliefs. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and how we all have great potential.  I invited him to visit the temple grounds when he had the time. There is so much peace to be found even on the temple grounds.

I have a very busy week ahead! I have two lessons to teach today and then we teach just about every day this week too. On top of missionary discussions, my companion and I were asked to give the lesson in our district meeting this Sunday. It's kind of overwhelming but I know I can handle it.

Hope you are all having a wonderful week!

Ai,

Sister Jordan